Happiness Quote by Jane Rule

Happiness, in Jane Rule's telling, isn't loud. It's private, almost anti-missionary. The line cuts against the cultural myth that conviction is proof of virtue; instead, Rule suggests the opposite: the more someone needs the world to validate their life, the more they pressure the world to mirror it.

The intent is diagnostic, not sentimental. Rule is sketching a social psychology of coercion: people who feel "martyred and broken" often convert their pain into authority. If suffering is the entry fee, then everyone else should have to pay it too. The subtext is that moral crusades are frequently grief in costume. What looks like certainty can be a demand for company in regret.

That phrasing matters. "Genuinely happy" signals authenticity over performance, and "in their choices" keeps it grounded in lived decisions rather than abstract identity. "Force them" is the key verb: Rule isn't talking about persuasion or advocacy; she's naming compulsion, the impulse to legislate, shame, or socially punish. The line quietly reframes intolerance as insecurity with better PR.

Context sharpens the stakes. Rule, a Canadian novelist and essayist deeply associated with lesbian literature and queer politics, wrote in an era when non-normative lives were routinely pathologized and regulated. Her observation doubles as a defense and a critique: the most aggressive enforcers of "normal" can be less guardians of order than prisoners of their own compromised bargains. Contentment doesn't need converts; resentment does.